ACRYLIC TANK ?

[BastardFish]

I have a 90gallon acrylic tank that I bought with nice stand for $50 The catch is that it has only what I can refer to as feathering, similar to that wich happens to car paint on the front of it. Someone told me that this is cased by stress and that there is nothing I can do about it. That there is no way to buff it out. Is this true? I can deal with it but I just have a hard time excepting this! Any info would be helpful Thanks.

 

[Jesse]

Sounds like what is commonly referred to as "crazing." It's generally considered harmless except in severe cases. See the following article for details.

Acrylic Aquarium Repair

Here's some relevant discussion of crazing from that article:

Crazing is the term for the network of fine surface cracks that can appear on acrylic. It is generally harmless but the cracks can deepen and lead to failure.

When I asked a local tank manufacturer how serious crazing was, he showed me an acrylic pipe that had failed solely due to crazing. He suggests crazing occurs most on polished acrylic surfaces. Most tank manufacturers polish the top pane so that you don't cut yourself on the sharp edge of the cut-outs. It is nice to not cut yourself here but a better way to avoid both crazing and scrapes is to give the edge a bevel (a 45 cut).

Crazing, as discussed before, is a fine network of surface cracks that run in random directions and are often so shallow they look like scratches. These are not necessarily bad but if they begin to deepen, they can ultimately lead to tank failure. If you have these scratches, you should just keep an eye on them.

BTW, I see that you're from SLO. I grew up there and my parents still live there.

 

[BastardFish]

Nice link thank you!